Part 30 (1/2)

[Footnote 1: _Pterois muricata_, Cuv. and Val. iv. 363. _Scarpaena miles_, Bennett; named, by the Singhalese, ”_Maharata-gini_,” the Great Red Fire, a very brilliant red species spotted with black. It is very voracious, and is regarded on some parts of the coast as edible, while on others it is rejected.]

[Footnote 2: _Glyphisodon Brownriggii_, Cuv. and Val. v. 484; _Choetodon Brownriggii_, Bennett. A very small fish about two inches long, called _Kaha hartikyha_ by the natives. It is distinct from Choetodon, in which BENNETT placed it. Numerous species of this genus are scattered throughout the Indian Ocean. It derives its name from the fine hair-like character of its teeth. They are found chiefly among coral reefs, and, though eaten, are not much esteemed. In the French colonies they are called ”Chauffe-soleil.” One species is found on the sh.o.r.es of the New World (_G. saxatalis_), and it is curious that Messrs. QUOY and GAIMARD found this fish at the Cape de Verde Islands in 1827.]

[Footnote 3: This fish has a sharp round spine on the side of the body near the tail; a formidable weapon, which is generally partially concealed within a scabbard-like incision. It raises or depresses this spine at pleasure. The fish is yellow, with several nearly parallel blue stripes on the back and sides; the belly is white, the tail and fins brownish green, edged with blue.

It is found in rocky places; and according to BENNETT, who has figured it in his second plate, it is named _Seweya_. It has been known, however, to all the old ichthyologists, Valentyn, Renard, Seba, Artedi, and has been named _Chaetodon lineatus_, by Linne. It is scarce on the southern coast of Ceylon.]

Of these richly coloured fishes the most familiar in the Indian seas are the _Pteroids_. They are well known on the coast of Africa, and thence eastward to Polynesia; but they do not extend to the west coast of America, and are utterly absent from the Atlantic. The rays of the dorsal and pectoral fins are so elongated, that when specimens were first brought to Europe it was conjectured that these fishes have the faculty of flight, and hence the specific name of ”_volitans_” But this is an error, for, owing to the deep incisions between the pectoral rays, the pteroids are wholly unable to sustain themselves in the air. They are not even bold swimmers, living close to the sh.o.r.e and never venturing into the deep sea. Their head is ornamented with a number of filaments and cutaneous appendages, of which one over each eye and another at the angles of the mouth are the most conspicuous. Sharp spines project on the crown and on the side of the gill-apparatus, as in the other sea-perches, _Scorpaena, Serra.n.u.s_, &c., of which these are only a modified and ornate form. The extraordinary expansion of their fins is not, however, accompanied by a similar development of the bones to which they are attached, simply because they appear to have no peculiar function, as in flying fishes, or in those where the spines of the fins are weapons of offence. They attain to the length of twelve inches, and to a weight of about two pounds; they live on small marine animals, and by the Singhalese the flesh (of some at least) is considered good for table. Nine or ten species are known to occur in the East Indian Seas, and of these the one figured above is, perhaps, the most common.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PTEROIS VOLITANS.]

Another species known to occur on the coasts of Ceylon is the _Scorpaena miles_, Bennett, or _Pterois miles_, Gunther[1], of which Bennett has given a figure[2], but it is not altogether correct in some particulars.

[Footnote 1: The fish from the Sea of Pinang, described by Dr. CANTOR with this name (Catal. Mal. Fish. p. 42), is again different, and belongs to a third species.]

[Footnote 2: _Fishes of Ceylon_, Pl. ix.]

In the fishes of Ceylon, however, beauty is not confined to the brilliancy of their tints. In some, as in the _/Scarus harid_, Forsk[1], the arrangement of the scales is so graceful, and the effect is so heightened by modifications of colour, as to present the appearance of tessellation, or mosaic work.

[Footnote 1: This is the fish figured by BENNETT as _Sparus pepo_.

_Fishes of Ceylon_, Plate xxviii.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCARUS HARID. After Bennett.]

_Fresh-water Fishes_.--Of the fresh-water fish, which inhabit the rivers and tanks, so very little has. .h.i.therto been known to naturalists[1], that of nineteen drawings sent home by Major Skinner in 1852, although specimens of well-known genera, Colonel Hamilton Smith p.r.o.nounced nearly the whole to be new and undescribed species.

[Footnote 1: In extenuation of the little that is known of the fresh-water fishes of Ceylon, it may be observed that very few of them are used at table by Europeans, and there is therefore no stimulus on the part of the natives to catch them. The burbot and grey mullet are occasionally eaten, but they taste of mud, and are not in request.

Some years ago the experiment was made, with success, of introducing into Mauritius the _Osphromenus olfax_ of Java, which has also been taken to French Guiana. In both places it is now highly esteemed as a fish for table. As it belongs to a family which possesses the faculty, hereafter alluded to, of surviving in the damp soil after the subsidence of the water in the tanks and rivers, it might with equal advantage be acclimated in Ceylon. It grows to 20 lbs. weight and upwards.]

Of eight of these, which were from the Mahawelliganga, and caught in the vicinity of Kandy, five were carps; two were _Leucisci_, and one a _Mastacembelus_ (_M. armatus_, Lacep); one was an _Ophiocephalus_, and one a _Polyacanthus_, with no serrae on the gills. Six were from the Kalanyganga, close to Colombo, of which two were _Helostoma_, in shape approaching the Chaetodon; two _Ophiocephali_, one a _Silurus_, and one an _Anabas_, but the gills were without denticulation. From the still water of the lake, close to the walls of Colombo, there were two species of _Eleotris_, one _Silurus_ with barbels, and two _Malacopterygians_, which appear to be _Bagri_.

The _fresh-water Perches_ of Europe and of the North of America are represented in Ceylon and India by several genera, which bear to them a great external similarity (_Lates, Therapon_). They have the same habits as their European allies, and their flesh is considered equally wholesome, but they appear to enter salt-water, or at least brackish water, more freely. It is, however, in their internal organisation that they differ most from the perches of Europe; their skeletons are composed of fewer vertebrae, and the air bladder of the _Therapon_ is divided into two portions, as in the carps. Four species at least of this genus inhabit the lakes and rivers of Ceylon, and one of them, of which a figure is given above, has been but imperfectly described in any ichthyological work[1]; it attains to the length of seven inches.

[Footnote 1: Holocentrus quadrilineatus, _Bloch_. It is allied to _Helotes polytoenia_, Bleek., from Halmaheira which it can be readily distinguished by having only five or six blackish longitudinal bands, the black humeral spot being between the first and second; another blackish blotch is in the spinous dorsal fin. There are two specimens in the British Museum collection, one of which has recently arrived from Amoy; of the other the locality is unknown. See GuNTHER, _Acanthopt.

Fishes_, vol. i. p. 282, where mention of the black humeral spot has been omitted.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THERAPON QUADRILINEATUS.]

In addition to marine eels, in which the Indian coasts abound, Ceylon has some true fresh-water eels, which never enter the sea. These are known to the natives under the name of _Theliya_, and to naturalists by that of _Mastacembelus_. They have sometimes in ichthyological systems been referred to the s...o...b..idae and other marine families, from the circ.u.mstance that the dorsal fin anteriorly is composed of spines. But, in addition to the general shape of the body, their affinity to the eel is attested, by their confluent fins, by the absence of ventral fins, by the structure of the mouth and its dent.i.tion, by the apparatus of the gills, which opens with an inferior slit, and above all by the formation of the skeleton itself.[1]

[Footnote 1: See GuNTHER'S _Acanthopt. Fishes_, vol. iii. (Family Mastacembelidae).]

Their skin is covered with minute scales, coated by a slimy exudation, and the upper jaw is produced into a soft tripart.i.te tentacle, with which they are enabled to feel for their prey in the mud. They are very tenacious of life, and belong, without doubt, to those fishes which in Ceylon descend during the drought into the muddy soil.[1] Their flesh very much resembles that of the eel; and is highly esteemed.[2] They were first made known to European naturalists by Russell[3], who brought to Europe from the rivers round Aleppo specimens, some of which are still preserved in the collection of the British Museum. Aleppo is the most western point of their geographical range, the group being mainly confined to the East-Indian continent and its islands.

In Ceylon only one species appears to occur, the

[Footnote 1: See post, p. 351.]

[Footnote 2: CUV. and VAL., _Hist. Poiss._ vol. iii. p. 459.]